


Origins

by TheDweeb



Series: FFXIVWrite2018 [15]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Au Ra Raen (Final Fantasy XIV), Au Ra Xaela (Final Fantasy XIV), Child Abandonment, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Non-Graphic Violence, Organized Crime, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 10:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18963223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDweeb/pseuds/TheDweeb
Summary: To appreciate where you were you had to remember where you came from.





	Origins

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 17 (make-up day) for FFXIVWrite2018

His first memories were of Reunion. Though faint he could remember the smell of buuz that somehow overpowered the scent of horse that permeated the place. Sometimes he missed it while in his world of oils and perfumes. There was a purity to the Steppe that conventional civilization lacked. Of course, that was why his mother had left.

He had been a mere five summers when she told him she was leaving. She was going to find a new life, she said, one that did not involve constant warfare and all the trappings that came with it. She would come back for him as soon as she found a place they could call home. Days could be endured and so too could weeks, but as they stretched into months to culminate into a year he had realized that the Qestir who had taken to caring for him were right; words were lies. So, he refused to speak.

It was clear from the beginning that he would never truly be part of the tribe. His white scales marked him as other, a child of Azim in the lands of Nhaama. Were he possessed of present wisdom as a child he would have found it amusing that even the Oronir treated him as an outcast, but a child had no such wisdom. And so he remained silent, tending to Qestiri herds and flocks, helping to cook, and being given food and shelter for his trouble when he was most assuredly more troubling to them.

At seven summers he was cast out of Reunion. It was not exile, but he was not Qestir and what compassion they had had for an abandoned half-breed child had run dry. He remembered Sarangerel, a woman whose own son had died around the same time his mother has left. In the silent way of the Qestir, he had watched her argue with the khan for him to stay. He had been happy that she had considered him as her son but if she had continued she would risk more than he was worth, so he left. The pirates of the Ruby Sea had been no worse than many of his bullies from Reunion–though looking back he had wondered what would have happened to him had he gone to the Malaguld instead–and through them he might learn what happened to his mother. Too, they had given him the gift of words, of lies, and he found he was good at both. 

It was at fifteen summers that he abandoned the Confederates to make his own way. They had mocked and cajoled, told him he would amount to nothing without them, without family. They were right in the beginning.

By sixteen summers he had gained a new family in the form of other abandoned youths. At first they had been lead by a man much older, but one cuff and ill intentioned touches too many had put a knife to his throat and sent him to eternal slumber in the harbor in Kugane. As he had been the one to do it, he had become the de facto leader and Batuhan became Giichi Hinode and Giichi became successful. His success was so great that he accomplished that which Batuhan had failed in an found his mother after hearing talk of the Black Opal of the Red Lantern District until, once again, she vanished from his life in a sea of blood.

Now she was forever gone. Whether she returned to Nhaama, the Eorzean’s Lifestream, or perhaps was condemned to one of the Seven Hells he did not know. What he did know was that his sister still remained and he would do all he could to ensure he was not left alone again.


End file.
